After years of putting up with Fabris’ directional kickoff bullshit, up-and-down coverage teams and the frustration of watching what seems like most of America fielding kickers who can put kickoffs in the end zone more often than not, I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to hear a Georgia head coach admit the obvious.

“It’s like an 80 percent chance if you start inside the 20, you do not score,” Smart said. “So 80 percent of offenses cannot function 80 yards downfield. So you’ve got touchbacks like Auburn’s guy (Daniel Carlson at 79.2 percent) has every time or you pin them inside the 20, there’s an 80 percent chance they’re not getting points. We weren’t behind that 20-yard line, we weren’t behind that fence very often last year. And some of that had to do with the coverage too, not just kickers.”

Yeah, I know touchbacks come out to the 25, but you get what Kirby is saying there. Besides, one thing’s for sure. Nobody’s ever run back a touchback for six points.

I don’t care who kicks off, just that the results are an improvement on 2016.

Georgia ranked 65th nationally in touchback percentage at 35.82 percent, according to CFBstats.com. Blankenship, who made 14 of 18 field goals, had touchbacks on 38.2 percent of kickoffs. Marvin had touchbacks on 49.3 percent of his kickoffs last year.

19 responses to “Kick the damned ball in the end zone.”

I don’t know if he will compete for the job this year, but the Buce kid from GAC kicked the ball consistently deep into or through the end zone the last couple of years. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him join the competition in the fall.

Senator, I appreciate that the stupidity of our new head coach is so easily dismissed with a simple “Yeah, I know touchbacks come out to the 25, but you get what Kirby is saying there.” but I am very concerned that NotSo Smart played in the era when safeties led with their helmets. Is there even the most casual of follower here that does not know that the ball is spotted on the 25 yard line? Not arguing with the sentiment but this on the job training is taking a little longer than it should. I guess we will not take him literally but we have to take him seriously. Just damn

Yeah, well like I have been saying in these pages for years, why the heck CAN’T we see the value in a kicker who can do just that? Kick it over everyone’s head and reduce the runback potential to zero. We seem all orgasmic about recruiting a 358 lb guard, but somehow can’t connect with the fact that the freakin’ kicking game is a good bit more important to the outcome of the game than a couple of plays where a guard misses a block.
Any head coach who thinks you solve this problem with walk-ons is a certifiable idiot. And deserves to get his ass handed to him. I hope Smart has better brains than that.

What I don’t understand is why fans always think we choose directional kicks, or shorter kicks, and could just slam it through the back of the end zone if we wanted to. Maybe we don’t try hard enough to get Carlson-level kickers (there are very, very few out there, and high school kicking is different). That’s a criticism I could see. But it makes me crazy when our fans act as if it’s our STRATEGY to have kicks returned. Everybody wants touchbacks. Being able to get them is another matter. To me it’s the same as arguing that if we don’t score a touchdown on every drive, that means we decided not to score on those drives.

I may be misreading, but my understanding of what Richt said (and said at other times) is that if you’re not dang sure you can kick it out, you’d better plan to have coverage, which means kicking it to a spot. Of course our coverage was always awful. But Richt said (again, my understanding) that if he just tried to kick it out, and it didn’t go, we were more at risk of a run back. This is one I’ve always wanted clarified. I just can’t believe even a DUMB coach (and coaches can be very mule-headed in football) would have the option of touch-backs and choose to offer a return.

Yep, kicking from the 20 had a major impact on that game. The BS call on one player when they didn’t call it on TN with 3-4 players on the field when celebrating (and one was in street clothes…how the hell do you miss that?)

Quote Of The Day

“We still have not played our best,” Smart said of his defense. “We still have guys that do not strike blockers the right way and do it the right way consistently. We have a couple guys that turn down hits. I know, to you guys, we’re looking at stats and the numbers, but there are several plays in that game that are this far from being the other way [if] we don’t do it right, and we’ve got to make those plays.” — AJ-C, 9/25/17